^Or that someone would find it and accidentally shoot someone.
There’s an old TV ad, I can’t remember if it’s was a PSA or from an advocacy group, but it shows a preschooler dragging a chair into a room, lugging one phone book, then another, and a third, and plopping them them on the chair. He climbs up on this tower to stretch on his tiptoes and retrieve the box hidden on the high shelf. He opens the box revealing the gun inside. I remember being transfixed by this ad when it came out.
As to the original story, I keep wondering what was happening in this apartment before the room search. Were there heated arguments about Presidential politics or the Second Amendment?